


A man of honor

by godbewithyouihavedone



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Historical RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cheating, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7259131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godbewithyouihavedone/pseuds/godbewithyouihavedone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The lamps will search out shadows in the cobblestones and fill the streets with color, and then in that moment he will be standing before her.  He will come to her in the unlit night, striking up with the fire like a meteor across the deep purple of the dark sky.  But she is too weary to find light in him any longer.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Maria, Eliza, and Alexander, in another set of lives, face the calm before the scandal.  Canon AU, Alexander is married to Maria and has an affair with Eliza.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A man of honor

**I.**  
The last vestiges of sunset are sliding down the stone walls of their street, dark rushing to fill the void like ink poured over the sky. These winter nights blanket the city all in a rush, as if they cannot stand the slow passage between day to day to day. But these moments, between the dark and when the workers come around to kindle the streetlights, are precious to her. She stands in the doorway, holding little William, feeling his small body shift against her breast as he fusses. In these moments, with only the stars and the neighboring house fireplaces left, no one has to see her.

She remembers the dark, undersized home she grew up in, where the only way to guard herself from her father’s rages, her mother’s spite, was to blow out the candle, clamp her hands over her ears, and vanish. She has learned how to make commanding a room feel natural, learned to live with the blinding glitter of a chandelier, a glass of spirits, shining red fabric and necklaces of pearls. But even as she practices this artifice, nothing will ever feel as safe as living in the dark.

Only a little while before the street is lit again. Every night she prays to hear the fizz of the wick blazing, see orange and yellow and delicate blue at its core. The lamps will search out shadows in the cobblestones and fill the streets with color, and then in that moment he will be standing before her. He will come to her in the unlit night, striking up with the fire like a meteor across the deep purple of the dark sky. But she is too weary to find light in him any longer.

Maria always learned her lessons quickly.

She closes the door, puts William to his little bed, rocking him as she journeys across the room. Bright and ornate, with the finest woodwork, the detailed drop-cloths, the darling needle-points. She has watched her husband bring home the best of the best. William yawns and curls up against her palm when she sets him down, and she listens closely for signs of James and Mary, who are of the age to pretend to sleep and then tiptoe around when they think she can’t hear them.

But Maria listens well. She’ll know when they creep down the hall, and she’ll know when he finally stumbles through the door and collapses on his chair, sleeps next to William. He is a doting, loving father, when he is able to tear himself away, and that she can appreciate even if she cannot understand the rest.

She knew what being a “confirmed bachelor” indicated—perversion or aversion, in his case she believes both—and yet it burns in her throat. After everything she has taught him, after years being smeared across the press, after three children, he is still searching. When she was younger she coveted and romanticized the power he holds: war hero, general, delegate, secretary. He was beautiful and burning, and she knew she wouldn’t last.

When she found out about her condition, about James, she tried to leave. Away from New York, away from the colonies, what did it matter? She knew what kind of women he usually went for, that the most she could hope for was money that would feel disgusting to receive, siphoning off more of his shine.

But he found out and against it all he married her. They did not love each other then, for Maria was a girl and did not know what it was to love, and he was a man who found love a great deal easier to lose than duty. Though he does not use his positions to acquire wealth as she urges, they are sealed together under the law. Their family will never starve.

She knows how to be a wife, even if she does not know how to be a lady. For ten years, she has shared her bed and her body and her mind. He is insatiable, tells her how amazing she feels, how cruel and sparkling her thoughts, how blessed their children. But then all she has is depleted, and there is still so much yearning in him left.

The woman, or the man, or the affairs of state, what does it matter what draws him from their bed? It is all beyond her, rules and deep breeding and heavy money, but she knows it was once beyond him too. Sometimes she wishes to take her kitchen-knives to his arteries, to find life, red as the dresses he clothes her in, running fast as he always does but private and hers and hurting. Perhaps it is one of his genteel lady friends, making good on his flirting from political dinners. Perhaps if she grabbed him by the throat when he waltzed in the door he would again gasp and look up at her and reach toward her, as if they were new, as if she is worthy enough to burn in him.

She returns to their marriage bed, begins to take down her hair, pin by pin, curl falling by curl. In the amber of the candlelight she knows her skin is lovely dark, her neck elegant, her body full. Layers of fancy clothes are never enough to hide what he wanted.

His desk is strewn with papers. Once she found an article from one of Jefferson’s ink-fingered hitmen, talking about his choosing a loose wife, visiting all the working women in the city, whispered undertones of worse inclinations. He wants to be rid of her, she is sure of it. She knows how it looks from her parents' faces, from senators when she smiles bewitchingly but talks without grace, from her own reflection. She knows what he fought through, why he hides. He can pretend he is not a bastard but he cannot forget that she is a whore. He understands what she can see. Maria will always be there, gazing into the dark.

The door creaks downstairs. She lies down in their bed and closes her eyes, from sunset to night in an instant.

 

 **II.**  
Ages past, prophetesses lay down in tents in the desert and their heads filled like sand with the city of god. They knew that weaving or tending the herd or feeding their children would not quench the rough dry truths scraping the back of their throat. So they took up mantles, weapons, prayer, and they stood before the tribes stinging and snarling with light.

She thinks it would drive a woman to curse the land, to have the same dream every night. She is almost mad herself from it. Nothing has ever pierced her like this revelation; it tastes like steel and it squeezes her ribs and it hollows her soul, and the worst part is that it is beautiful.

When she slips away, it is to a world filled with nothing but sand, bright and gritty and warm between her toes, with a date tree for her shelter. There is a stillness like death in this vision, not a breeze or a rustle or a changing of the beaming sun, though the air smells of salt and brine. In the distance she hears the sounds of markets and docks, and from the white-blue horizon a figure walks closer. His footsteps across the sand scuff, the pattern of them a snake trail. He draws nearer, larger, darker, but he never reaches her.

What did they do, those lionesses of Israel, when their god seared futures into them? When they woke beside mortal men, heads still ringing with the approach of armies? She thinks there were many more than can be written down, women told to cease babbling and tend to the family, who never spoke their visions. Afraid of their husbands, of their people, of their destinies. Yawning possibilities, stretched over the eons, of women who buckled and broke and stayed silent and turned from truth.

And oh, Eliza envies them.

Years ago: snow sleeting up around the windows set the long room blinding bright. In the moment she saw him she lost control of her future. That night, the line of his body slowly bowing toward her, the sweat of his hands covering her palm, cleaved her life. She thought, a fool and a girl, that the dizzying excitement, the images of love and laughter and lives built around each other, was a hope. Even then, though, he had not felt safe.

Now he does. She knows what he wants, knows the way he loves her. She wakes from the same dream, and to the same reality, as every midnight. He slips into her rooms, the key dangling from his fingertips, following the lace of his gaudy shirtsleeves. His skin is golden in the lamplight, and he draws the curtains over the window, sits beside her. His hand reaches, to trace through her hair.

She thought giving in would end the dream. Finally she admitted to herself there would never be a chance to deny him, that even telling him to leave her, every other organ and grace and knowledge she has drags him back to stay. She cannot lie, though her tongue attempts to form words in the dark: that she does not love, that this is beneath her, that she must go back to her husband. It is if her throat is filled with lead. The choice, the inevitability, is incalculably worse now.

He kisses her. She thinks about the first time, his shy hesitancy, her bold eyes spurring him to action. She thinks about their little courtship crumbling to pieces, sitting in a verdant garden talking over his unworthiness. Eliza had cried, then, to know that she ought to leave him, to find someone with the wealth and status befitting her birth. Seeing him chase after other women, after her sister, that had stung, but back then she had contented herself that they were no longer fated.

Then she married, settled into life devoted to her little ones, her husband, her charity. For awhile, she pretended she could be truly happy. Tending her flock under the sweating sun, never reaching beyond her role.

Now he presses down against her, whispering against her lips, her name over and over, an ancient blessing. She opens to him, moving against him, teeth and tongue and hands searching out all that they can feel. Still as heady and lost as the first time he touched her, that innocent cupping of her hand. She needs and burns, and the voice inside her reciting scripture is never as strong as the voice living it. As sick as it is, being with him has always felt holy. Perhaps she believed in her own goodness once because she did not know her depths. But here they are, drowning.

It had started, again after so long, so innocently. A social visit never seemed improper, especially considering his fruitful marriage to a young beauty and his continuing political alliance with her father. He is a lawyer, and back then she had still thought she had other options. But she cannot leave her husband, and she cannot leave him. Both were quickly clear in his company.

He makes love to her, and she holds him close and thinks about what punishments await their sin. He is inside, where the dreams lie dormant, where the sand pours out. Through the pleasure she prays for water. She thinks about his wife, and her children, and when his hands stroke over her they are always careful not to press on the bruises.

In a ballroom half a life ago they mistook youth and doubt for brokenness, and now that they are here, truly wrong, she wishes she had known. She wishes he had thought to tell her of his love before it became a reassurance. Eliza, there is still someone in the world who adores you, Eliza you have to leave, Eliza I think about that day so much, Eliza I will protect you where I failed before.

She doesn’t blame him. It is not his fault they did not know. Even if she were strong enough to stand before her people and tell them of the victories she’s seen behind her eyes, she would never welcome the bloodshed needed for a changing world. Yet every night there is the question, and when he curls around her, breathing gratefully into her ear, she digs her nails into his sides and bows her head to his chest as dry sobs of anger shake her body.

Standing in the endless island under the fanning leaves of a small tree, she waits for the dark smudge on the horizon. Sweat pours down her face, anointing her. She reaches forth her hand to the only other member of her tribe and in a voice that is not hers she says that they will be triumphant, their victory eternal. She says that when he is beside her, she is no longer afraid. Of her husband, of losing her children, of disappointing her family, of ruining his office. There is one path, a path of pain and cruelty and glory, and she cannot tell what waits at the end, but she never knew love until he came back for her.

His fierce dark eyes are all the prophecy she can discern. And when he whispers his goodbyes, slipping from her bed, she prepares herself for another dream.

 

 **III.**  
Most people do not know what is it to be truly seen. Pillars of the community are looked on, their deeds and their families placed as offerings before all. The crowds feel the spill of praise from their own lips and wish to receive the type of warmth they bestow. Those who can open their purses for the church, for the government, investing to see the returns on their tiny share of glory.

He wants to be known, but not only to be lauded. Any who admire him are a weight to counterbalance the scorn that has always been a mantle on his shoulders. As a boy, he ran a shop, counted money. Watched the rusted bronze scale creak on its hinges, wobbling with each new addition, until that absolving moment when the sides were finally equal.

That’s the trick, to being great instead of nothing. If so many love him, it can only clean the slate, never make him whole.

But it’s the most Alexander can fight for.

His lips and eyes are sticky with crying. He wakes with his son’s small body curled against his chest, in front of a hearth full of ashes. William is jostled by his stirring, yawns into the lapels of his coat, his tiny hands working to grasp at velvet.

His children will not start with a crooked scale, pile achievements frantically until they are no longer sunken. That was what he wanted to build with his wife, and he’d thought she understood, as no one else was able to. There could be no good in Eliza taking him, with her family already clustered at the top. Military glory, political prowess—these trading tokens only went so far. Worthy, worthy. With his marriage to Maria, he had not needed to even consider it, let alone have it hound him in the night.

William burbles to him, something beginning to sound like “papa”. He places him in his little bed, and begins the fire anew. Practiced steps, as if the marching routine could slough off the filth in how he’s acted. Living like a human balance beam, swaying from one end to another. The sparks catch and his son watches, hands clapping together. He settles into his blankets, finding warmth so easily.

It has to end. Alexander hears the drumbeat, the pulse in his heart waiting for war.

Every time he sees her (he must go see her now, cannot keep waking sprawled on his chair instead of in their room, cannot leave her cold and worried) he can only think about how much he loves her, all he’s let himself lose. Maria is a weight over his heart in every way.

Her beauty, her quick mind, her broken practicality, she draws him just as easily as the first time he saw her on the street, spilling out of her hastily tied red dress, her expression almost like a challenge. He would not have been able to win so often, and so readily, and take his prizes without shame, without her example. And last night all he could think about was leaving her. He is sure it is still there, branded on his eyes and cheeks and lips and neck, and he cannot look in her judging eyes and not feel less. Down and down, while she rises new and young and always right about his quick cold instincts.

But she is not the only one he loves, and on the other end, tipping the balance, is Eliza, Eliza who is so afraid. If her husband knew, and if Alexander left, he is sure she would never find peace. A man can beat his wife, but ought to reprimand, not punish until she is lying sobbing on the ground.

Last night, her stomach was rounded between them, only a bit. She has told him she never wanted anyone else in the world, and she has told him that there is no chance the child is a sin. His skillset from law and politics allow him to read between the lines. He has been so careful, using codes in their letters from his days helping the spies, only visiting after all are asleep. She came to him for help, and if he cannot facilitate her leaving, he will at least be the happiest part of her life. He will never be the one to tip the scales.

Truthfully, he is not sure he could stop even if she were not in danger. Eliza has never been a noted beauty, as Maria. She is older and her body in the candlelight shows it. But he loves her with a mouth full of ashes, clings to her dark hair and her great well of forgiveness. Seeking sin and penance under the same roof, he finds only her, marked with every year they have spent apart, and knowing what he is worth, and still able to need him.

Through it all he is a parasite, living on both of their fears and disgusts. Sometime between it all he forgot how to escape. So he could never have taught her.

He begins up the stairs, thinks about watching prisoners ascend to the gallows, swallow and stand before the last mercy left. His wife curls around his side of the bed, hair down. She wakes the moment he enters the room.

He talks to her about preparing to take on new clients, tells her about his duties in statecraft. She listens, but he knows she doesn’t believe him, because there is no advice after. She leaves to prepare their children, instruct the servants, and his legs give way. He collapses to the bed, head in his hands, pulling on his hair.

That was the last night, he should have said. That was the last time I will lie to you. We can work on evening the balance now. You can hit me, call me less than nothing, take up all the ways he hurt her.

But that would be another excuse.

Yesterday, with the kindness of hangmen, Jefferson and Madison and Burr pressed coded letters into his palms. They thought he was conspiring with England, breaking another set of vows. They thought they saw through him, and he had defended himself before he remembered they were not his secrets to give. Now, her father is implicated, by the carnal association he has with Eliza and their past alliance.

Maria has told him enough times that the inadequate salary from his statecraft is only worthwhile for the personal honor it brings him, has often told him to raise prices for private legal counsel. Without his reputation, how can he take care of her, of his children? How will Eliza live, with her father disgraced, when being a Schuyler has always defined her?

But then, how could he face risking her? Her husband does not know, and that used to be a shield, but they have loved as if there was no price for it. His stomach roils.

There is nothing to be done. Let the balance tip. Let it be that he seduced her, let him write that she begged him to leave and never mention the way she kissed him afterwards. He will be the evil eye, drawing all the hatred, loyal to his country if nothing else in the world. Let all the reputation he has built stand long enough for the people to believe him. It is cold as ice, to be known. It is scalding. Long ago a truly great man told him.

Give me the noose, he wants to tell his enemies, lead me to the altar. Leave them, they never asked to be seen like this, they were never wrong enough to want to be washed away. Maria is strong, she can live without him, and Eliza learned over the years. He stands, alone, watches the bar tip from one pan to the other, and he opens his hands to let go of the only weight that he has left. The love he never deserved.

Alexander sits at his desk. He wets his quill. He awaits his judgment.


End file.
